“I hadn’t got my potatoes more’n two-thirds sold out and I didn’t have any good place to keep ‘em. I couldn’t afford to take chances of ‘em gettin’ frost-bitten any more. You know how easy potatoes freeze. You have to watch out while you’re peddlin’ ‘em in the fall and winter and some days you don’t dare take ‘em out at all. Before I got home I thought I’d have another drink so I stopped at a saloon where they always had the pollin’ place and where a good many politicians usually hung out; and I found some of the boys there, and the fellow that was runnin’ for assessor was in the saloon. He asked us all to drink a couple o’ times, and then he told us how easy he was in assessin’ the poor people’s property, and asked us to vote for him. We all said we would, and then he told us how he was assessor last year and how he’d stuck it onto the rich people and the corporations and how they was all against him this year. We all liked that, and then he gave us another drink. I was gettin’ so I felt it just a little, but of course I wa’n’t drunk. I could walk all right and talk pretty straight. I don’t suppose I’d taken more’n ten or twelve drinks in all day, and you know that won’t hurt anybody. I don’t know what I would’ve done such a cold day if it hadn’t been for the drinks. Oh, yes, in the last place they got to talkin’ about the alderman and said as how he wa’n’t goin’ to give out any turkeys this year. I didn’t like that and some of the fellers had quarreled about ‘em and then some of ‘em had been givin’ ‘em to us and we didn’t see what right he had to quit. They said the reason he wa’n’t goin’ to give ‘em was because a lot of the fellers had quarreled about ‘em and then some of ‘em had taken his turkeys and voted the other ticket, and some people had found fault with him because they didn’t get any turkey, and it looked as if he was losin’ votes instead of makin’ ‘em. Well, I’d been dependin’ on the turkey and it made me feel a little blue, for I didn’t know how I was goin’ to get anything for Thanksgivin’, and I didn’t think that you could have much of a Thanksgivin’ just on potatoes and mebbe a little pork. So I wa’n’t feelin’ none to good when I got on the wagon and drove away from the last place. It seemed as if everything had turned against me and I didn’t know what I was goin’ to do. It’s funny how much difference luck makes with a feller. You know somethin’ can happen in the mornin’ and make you feel good all day, and then again somethin’ will go wrong and no matter what you are doin’ it seems as if there was a sort of a weight pullin’ down on you. Well, I felt kind of blue as I drove home. I don’t think I could hardly have kept up only for the whiskey I’d drunk. I was kind of wonderin’ what it was all for and I didn’t see any reason for anything, or any chance that anything would be any better, or any real reason for livin’.